A scholarship program that supports undergraduate research in sustainability-related topics has resulted in a published paper, an award from the university, and a deep professional connection.
Lauren Ulrich received the 2024 Provost’s Award for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity for work she began as a 2020–21 Sustainability Scholar. As an extension of the Scholars program, she co-authored a paper with Dr. Suzannah Evans Comfort, The Media School, that was eventually published in Journalism History.
“From Distant to Devastating: The Newsworthiness of Environmental Controversies at the New York Times, 1950s–1970s” explores how the Times’ coverage of protected lands evolved in the mid-20th century. Focus areas include word choice, angle, and placement in the paper itself.
The Sustainability Scholars program pairs freshman and sophomore students with world-class faculty at IU Bloomington to work together on a semester-long research project. The Integrated Program in the Environment (IPE) administers the program, which grants each student researcher a $1,000 scholarship.
As a freshman, Ulrich said she had no formal research experience. But she’d been looking for ways to get more involved on campus. She was accepted and paired with Comfort, “one of (her) greatest mentors of all time.” Before the first day of classes, Ulrich was “already fangirling over her” and her experience in environmental journalism, academia, and communications.
“When we first started, it was supposed to be just a semester-long research project. There was no intention to expand it into a journal article,” Ulrich said. “But then once we started going pretty quickly, we realized that we were really excited about our project.”
Part of the project’s success, as it ran through 2020 and 2021, hinged on the New York Times’ robust digital archives.
Ulrich spent hours poring over articles from the midcentury, analyzing their themes, strategies, the journalists themselves, sources, angle, and more. She organized the findings into a giant color-coded spreadsheet to share with Comfort.
“I just really loved doing the archival research,” Ulrich said.
Her careful note-taking and identification of themes led to findings. For instance, in the 1950s, the word “environment” wasn’t mentioned in stories about what by the 1960s and 1970s were called “environmental issues.” Over that time period, the Times increasingly devoted deeper coverage to those topics and they were placed more prominently in the paper.
“She really embraced it and took it further than I had even imagined,” Comfort said.
Ultimately, Ulrich wrote large swaths of the paper based on their research, with Comfort editing and then adding her own research from the New York Times’ physical archives, which included editors’ notes, correspondence, and memos.
Ulrich credits her mentor with fanning the flames of her enthusiasm.
“She gave me so much creative control over projects,” Ulrich said. “We would collaborate together about the direction of the project. It was definitely empowering working with her because she was such a supportive mentor.
Ulrich graduated in May. In her time at IU, she went on to work for the Indiana Daily Student, intern at the Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism, and study abroad in Botswana monitoring wildlife.
“I think the research experience definitely carried over throughout the rest of college for me, and it opened up a lot of doors for other opportunities,” Ulrich said. “A lot of my professional connections I've made because I got this confidence boost my freshman year.”
This summer, Ulrich will work for the Forest Service in Montana’s Bob Marshall Wilderness. She also has been awarded a Ross Hazeltine Travel Scholarship from The Media School for international journalism. She’ll return to the Okavango Delta in Botswana to report on how rural communities there are adapting to environmental change.
“As professors, we hope that we’re the ones to light the flame,” Comfort said. “She showed up with the flame already lit, so I can't take credit for any of her abilities. I just provided an opportunity. And she had the desire to see the opportunity through, which was really great to see.”
As the hub for all environmental and sustainability-related programming on the Bloomington campus, IPE connects students with the experiences and support they need to excel as the next generation of environmental leaders. To this end, IPE has invested more than $70,000 in student research on environmental and sustainability topics over the past year, including the Sustainability Scholars program.
